


No Gentle Good Night

by sphinxofthenile



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Ethnic Violence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Minor Character Death, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:10:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sphinxofthenile/pseuds/sphinxofthenile
Summary: Iorveth. Geralt doesn't know the man but he knowsofhim, the fox among the squirrels, the whispered legend born of the betrayal at Cintra.





	No Gentle Good Night

_Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,_  
_And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,_ _  
Do not go gentle into that good night._

\--- Dylan Thomas

 

The mountains breathe mist into the morning and the early frost seeps white over the fallen leaves that crack under feet like a carpet of broken glass. The sound precedes the dark silhouettes slowly taking shape and form as they emerge from the thick fog, elusive and wraith-like. His throat constricts painfully at the defeat and suffering etched deep into their pale faces, at the wounds carved into their skin.

Eight of them left three days ago, with five goats and a horse cart of furs to trade for supplies. They were not due to return for another four.

His anxious eyes latch onto them as they are slowly revealed from the embrace of the mist, and keeps searching it when no more emerge. There is a sudden pressure in his chest, a pain inside like a crack in thin ice. It spreads and spreads with the certainty of his realization until he feels his mother's hand on his shoulder. He doesn't have to look to know she is swallowing back tears, and then he knows.

There is no cart, and the rest of them are not coming back.

"... at the ford… bandits… dh'oine…" The words beat against his temples like moths against a lantern's light.

" _Father._ " The word spills choked and agonized from his lips into the heart freezing quiet. It is no question, and they don't answer, except for the silent grief on their faces.

That is when the crack in his chest widens and something breaks, and it is only years later that Iorveth knows, it's a child's trust in the world shattering into pieces.

That winter, they starve.

 

{ & }

Iorveth. Geralt doesn't know the man but he knows _of_ him, the fox among the squirrels, the whispered legend born of the betrayal at Cintra. His first impression of the elf is arrogance and grandstanding. His instincts scream threat. His eyes take in the flute, the headscarf, the bow and the double swords. He can practically feel Vernon Roche losing it right next to him.

That is when he realizes the game at play, the calculated risk.

Iorveth is baiting them, wily and observant. His words are well-chosen, meant to rile up. If Geralt took him at face value, if he gave in to easy assumptions and underestimated the man before him, he would be making the exact mistake that Iorveth wants them to.

And a grave mistake it would be.

So he counters, trying to map the cracks, to see behind the stubborn pride the elf wears like a second layer of armor.

"I've seen your kind before. Proud Aen Seidhe sneaking around forests", he says, and there is a flicker of a flame in Iorveth's uncovered eye. Geralt can see the moment the elf's lines fail him and emotion takes over. It is the word _helpless_ that makes him slip.

But it is the mention of a powerful master holding his leash that makes Geralt realize he's not so much found a weakness as plunged a dagger into a badly healed wound. Iorveth's expression freezes up. His words lose their edge. But then Roche lashes out and all that saves them from turning into pincushions for Scoia'tael arrows is the spell Triss weaves around them.

In the end, it's still a win for Iorveth, even if not an absolute one. It is too bad he is the only thing standing between Geralt and the Kingslayer.

 

{ & }

At frostfall, the tax collectors come again for the third time that year. Rage, acid and black grips him as he listens to his mother plead and beg in the face of their callous disregard. The men take everything of value they have left because somewhere in a palace full of food and laughter a king draped in furs and gold needs more land, more soldiers, more whores.

They take his mother's wedding ring from her finger.

"I'm going to kill them," he tells her once they are gone, and the only thing he sees on her face is exhaustion and panic.

In his fondest memories, his mother is beautiful, radiant, smiling. These days he finds it harder and harder to see that woman in her. Thinned by loss and loneliness, bent out of her old shape by hardship, her smile is a rare and harrowed thing that only makes him heartsick.

"Hush, my dear boy, hush," she tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. She has to reach up, by now he is almost a head taller than she is. "If anyone heard you say such things--"

He shakes off her touch. "Cerwyn is right. Keeping our heads down and saying nothing just spurs the dh'oine to tighten the noose some more! Mother, Cadmael is joining the Scoia'tael--"

"No, Iorveth! I forbid it," she snaps at him wildly. "Do you hear me?"

"Mother--"

"Do you?" she repeats, sharp, relentless. She's never used that tone with him before.

"Yes," he bites out, defeated.

"Good. And I don't want to hear another word of this madness!" she declares, but her voice has a tremble to it that somehow cuts deeper than the earlier bite of her tone.

They don't talk about it again.

 

{ & }

The prison barge is a place pulled straight from a sick mind. Prisoners lie on handfuls of hay or just the hard wooden floor in their own filth. Their clothes are nothing but rags, their skin shows rashes, bug bites, signs of beating and torture. Their hopeless eyes are huge in their sunken faces, but barely any look at him and Triss as they pass.

It still doesn't prepare them for seeing Ciaran, and Geralt feels suddenly glad for throwing Loredo's offer right back in the bastard's face.

The elf is chained to the wall, naked from the waist up. He is covered in blood, all manners of cuts and bruises littering his body. His eyes are closed, his agonized breaths shallow and uneven. The flash of magic is bright in the darkness of the hold and Geralt nods his thanks to Triss.

"Letho used us. From the start. Our hatred…" Ciaran struggles with the words. The spell might have stabilized him, but he is still in a lot of pain. "Warn him, Gwynbleidd. Iorveth fights, because that is what he does best. He's Aen Seidhe. A real one, a free one. Among the last," Ciaran's voice takes on a tone of wistful wonder, and it touches Geralt's heart with a shadow of unexpected bitterness.

To Roche, to Loredo and the rest of them, Iorveth is a rabid animal, a vicious beast to be put down, on par with ghouls prowling battlefields. To his men, Iorveth is a symbol of everything they fight for. The voice of the silenced, the retribution of the wronged, the pride of the broken.

He is their very soul, maimed by human hands. He is their last hope.

Geralt might not agree, but he understands.

 

{ & }

It's not even midwinter yet when his mother gets sick. She smiles at him and lies, pretends it's nothing.

Iorveth watches her with growing dread, her sunken cheeks and fever-bright eyes, listens to her wheezing coughs in the night. He smiles at her and lies, goes to bed on an empty stomach so that she can have more. He labors and hunts and scrapes and loses weight.

She gets weaker and he prepares food, pulls water, piles firewood. Cold and fatigue settle in his bones, never leaving, and he is always hungry. He spends his evenings by her bed, putting on a brave face, nodding off for precious little sleep only when she falls into her own light, fitful slumber.

She smiles at him and lies, promises him she will be better soon. By the time the frost is letting up she just cannot leave the bed anymore. Her waxy skin stretches thin and frail over the sharp angles of her body and her breath whistles in and out of her lungs.

He could never beg for himself. For her, he would turn the world out of its corners.

So he swallows his pride and ignores the burning weight of humiliation that lodges itself deep inside his chest like the head of a morning star. The elves and dwarves are just as destitute as they are, and there is only so much they can do. The dh'oine, on the other hand, haven't a lick of concern for some 'pox-ridden elven wench'. They are not above stating that quite loudly either, like it's a point of pride.

So he smiles at her and lies, tells her it will be fine. He watches her sleep and bites his knuckles in helpless fury as he cries, silent, bitter-hot tears.

 

{ & }

"Seriously? _Iorveth_?" Dandelion is less than impressed with Geralt's choice of allies. It is only to be expected.

"Quit whining."

"Geralt, you do realize-- alright, alright, just don't say I didn't warn you." Dandelion throws his hands up in exasperation.

Geralt refrains from rolling his eyes. A witcher is not meant to decide, and he doesn't need Dandelion of all people to remind him of that. It's not like they have an abundance of options, and he has considered both.

Roche, the soldier. Straight lines and righteousness, greater good and lesser evil. He loves his homeland. He is duty-bound to his ruler, a debt of gratitude. Performing that duty is the source of his pride, his own crimes easily justified by king and country. He believes that justice is universal, that permission is absolution, that law trumps all, even if it comes from men like Foltest.  

A dedicated man, resourceful and efficient.

Iorveth is a menace, an idol to his men and a nightmare to everyone else. He has neither king nor country but he lacks not pride, and he owns his actions with a clear-eyed dignity. His justice is harsh, but it is his own, his word carries weight, and his passion for his cause pulls like the tide, elemental and blind like any force of nature.

A bitter man, sharp-witted, sharp-tongued.

Yet in him, Geralt also sees something else: the torch thrown at thatch roofs in the night, the wound that festers untended, the dying scream of a once glorious people. The punishing wrath for every tortured youth, raped woman, every slaughtered child; the hell to be paid for every yoke and chain and beating and betrayal.

He is terror and grief and ruin and defiance. He is the creation of men like Roche.

 

{ & }

There is a lilting whistle, and the Scoia'tael archers aim their bows with practiced ease. Iorveth follows their lead, some of the tension draining from his shoulders once Cadmael, lanky, bright and gap-toothed, gives him a lopsided grin. He adjusts his nervous grip on his bow, focuses on his breathing.

The trap is ready, and all they have to do is spring it.

Five elves on horseback emerge from the other side of the clearing, the bait for the guards escorting the local garrison's latest shipment of supplies. They are a sight to behold and ride like devils, but the man in the lead eclipses them all. His long hair flies free like a war banner and there is a scar across his fine, sharp-featured face. His eyes are that of the wolf, piercing and untamed, and his sheer presence is so immense, so utterly _commanding_ that the breath is knocked straight out of Iorveth's lungs.

The dh'oine are closing in and Cadmael gives the command, quick and decisive. Iorveth remembers his father's lessons and releases the string. His shot strikes a guard in the chest, and he falls off his horse with nary a sound. He thinks he should be terrified, but instead, his hatred is like a bright star in his chest, and he brings down another one with vicious satisfaction.

Those who survive their arrows are cut down by the elven riders. Blood drips from their swords, dh'oine blood, and Iorveth's chest swells with a multitude of inexplicable feelings as he sees them standing tall and proud over the dead bodies.

The man with the scar laughs, and his grin is that of the wolf too, silent and all sharp white teeth, and it travels down Iorveth's spine hot and cold like a threat and a promise.

 

{ & }

Non-humans are being massacred in Flotsam, and Geralt watches with newfound respect as Iorveth walks right into that madness without hesitation. There is nothing but Geralt standing between him and a gruesome death, and the only thing betraying his mask of indifference is a slightly elevated heartbeat and a string of snide remarks and sneering sarcasm.

It is the first time he can get a good glimpse of Iorveth in a fight, and that proves to be just another unexpectedly singular experience. Geralt can see the faults, how the elf has a stiffness in one shoulder that suggests an old injury, how his range is limited by his blind side. How he doesn't notice the soldier coming up from the right until a moment too late. He obviously misses having another sword in his left hand. It's in the way he holds his free arm, the way his balance is slightly off-kilter.

Yet even despite all these flaws, he's decidedly _impressive_. The innate grace of elves might be a widespread concept, but there is nothing elegant in the way Iorveth dispatches his foes. He has a feral caution to him, like a snake coiled to strike, and when he does it's fast and brutal, punctuated by a vicious kick to the knee here, a sword hilt to the face there. Geralt also notices how the elf keeps him in his blind spot, trusts him to cover his weak side.

No bandit or common soldier fights like this, with such discipline, such ruthless intensity. The guards don't stand a chance, and as the last one goes down with a blood-choked gurgle, it occurs to Geralt that he might have, after all, underestimated Iorveth.

 

{ & }

"My best asset turned and my trusted commander disobeying my orders," Isengrim grimaces at his injured arm. "You _knew_ I was to come alone."

" _My apologies_ for not letting your stubborn heroics kill you," Iorveth snaps irritably.

The meeting was a trap and a well-nigh successful one. They have almost lost him. _Iorveth_ has almost lost him. The crippling, panicked fury of it courses through his veins with every heartbeat like poison. "We should get back to the others," he adds more evenly, retrieving his knife from a nearby corpse. "Have someone look at that wound."

"Iorveth," that deep, resounding voice stops him cold, and he swallows hard to get rid of the sudden lump in his throat. "Thank you," Isengrim says with disarming sincerity and pulls Iorveth close with his good arm, brings their foreheads together.

Such an honor and such a curse, being so close but never close enough.

He tightens his grip on Isengrim's shoulders, and some of his despair must bleed through because the man pulls back slightly. His keen eyes search Iorveth's face, something building in the silence between them, and the next moment Isengrim is kissing him with a starved need that makes his breath catch.

"I'm sorry," Isengrim breaks away abruptly. He looks _shaken_ , his expression raw like a fresh wound. In all their years together, Iorveth cannot remember ever seeing him like this. The legend, the Iron Wolf, always composed, laughing death in the face.

His lips still tingle and his entire body feels numb. "Don't be," he whispers, and his voice is hoarse like he's sick. There are things he should be saying because Isengrim obviously expects him to, but in the end, he just sinks his fingers into that long dark fall of hair and crushes their lips together.

 

{ & }

The night is starless, but the air is getting progressively better as they leave Flotsam behind. Geralt spots Iorveth standing by the taffrail, alone and cast in shadow, and after a moment of hesitation, he moves to join him. He takes a drink from his wine, then tips the bottle towards him in offering.

"Erveluce," the elf says after taking a whiff of the contents, in a tone of such elated reverence it startles Geralt into a smirk.

"Scoia'tael and wine enthusiast," he deadpans.

After a long pull, Iorveth turns his good eye on him. "Doesn't match the stories you heard? They do tend to emphasize my preference for the blood of dh'oine children." And there it is again, that dry, amused drawl, that wicked sense of humor.

It is perhaps the most puzzling trait of his.

Geralt's gaze lands on the man beside him. Darkness veils the marred side of Iorveth's face, and looking at the firelight spill along the curve of his cheekbone, the clear line of his strong jaw, it occurs to Geralt just how stunning he must have been once before a vile hand took a blade to all that beauty.

His expression is guarded, carefully blank. But Geralt has seen him down in the hold,  sat on a stool with a dagger in his hands, taking in the cells, the shackles where Ciaran aep Easnillen was so brutally murdered. He had a strain in his breaths, a black abyss in his eye. An old elf in a young elf's skin, with a memory as long as it is bitter.

Not for the first time, Geralt wonders about the scars of the man beside him, the terrible ones that can be seen and the worst ones that cannot.

 

{ & }

He muffles his cries against his palm, hips moving in avaricious rhythm as he chases his pleasure, thighs quivering and head thrown back. Isengrim gasps next to his ear, his sharp white teeth closing over his windpipe, and that does it. Iorveth is lost, spilling into Isengrim's tight fist around his cock.

The bastard laughs against his throat, that silent wolf's laugh that sets his blood ablaze. But Isengrim is close too, and it takes only a few more jerky thrusts of his hips to reach his own climax. The bitten off sound he makes is _delightful_.

Iorveth closes his eyes and concentrates on just breathing, the arms caging him, the scent of skin and sex. His limbs feel heavy, but he forces himself to move, get up.

"Stay." Isengrim catches his wrist, laces their fingers together.

"You know I can't. What if--"

"Please," Isengrim says, and there is something there that gives Iorveth pause. The wolf eyes close, his mask of fearless confidence slipping, and Iorveth is gripped by a terrible want to keep him close, make him forget the darkness.

Isengrim kisses his eyes and tells him of Dol Blathanna. All within their grasp. But there will be a price, like there always is, measured in blood and tears and loss. Even if they win, they stand to lose much. If they fail, they risk losing everything.

"I don't see another path," Isengrim confesses. His eyes are averted, and it hurts to look at him, his old, tattered soul tearing gashes into his flesh that bleed pain.

Iorveth frames Isengrim's face with his palms, thumbs along the sharp curves of his cheeks. The bone-deep weight of love bends and breaks him inside in strange, unexpected ways, magnificent and unbearable.

There is no other path. They both know that.

 

{ & }

It's the first time Geralt sees Iorveth without his headscarf. He has seen many scars in his life, a lot of them terrible, but very few matches this one in its abhorrent deliberateness. Someone carved it into his flesh with intent, wanted him to suffer it, deep and ragged and all the way up to the empty hollow of his eye. Geralt's eyes narrow with the realization that it was burned out, with black-red coal or white-hot iron.

There is the taste of acid on his tongue, a quiet, seething ire in his chest as he regards it, this vicious mark born of hatred, not battle.

Iorveth makes no move to cover it up. He lets him see it - let's Geralt see him as he is. He has put his life in Geralt's hands before, but what he's showing now is a different kind of trust, and suddenly he thinks he sees something in that marred face.

A young elf in an old elf's skin, a village that starves in winter, a ravine of dead bodies traded for a valley that flowers not.

He thinks about Yaevinn, about Cedric and Torúviel, about a fight that is not his and will never be. But just because Geralt's path is different doesn't mean he knows not pain, and Iorveth's is a sharp constant in the lines of his body, in the look of his good eye.

Sometimes he seems made of it, pride and pain.

What he seems made of is wrath and steel as he steps between Prince Stennis and the gathering mob, his features hard as stone, his voice falling back from ancient walls making them all back down, cower before the burning gaze of his single eye.

Geralt watches, silent, knowing that he has somehow, yet again, underestimated Iorveth.

 

{ & }

He fights at Thanedd, and it's the first time he lays eyes on the most beautiful woman in the world. She is grace and light and she laughs freely, the way Iorveth wishes he could still laugh. He beholds her terrible beauty and he loves her with all the desperation of his heart, the way only ideals can be loved, not people.

He realizes what an utter fool he has been once all their glittering hopes and dreams are shattered into stardust. Betrayal, he could accept from the dh'oine, but from the soft white hands of Francesca Findabair it comes as poison, despicable and lethal.

They fought for her, they _died_ for her - Enid an Gleanna, the beauty, the vision, the hope of the elves. Iorveth admires her terrible ambition and he hates her with all the desperation of his heart, the way only fallen idols deserve.

He fights at Brugge, and it is the first time he sees destruction of such scale, a death toll so profound, so senseless that anyone with a shred of sanity should recoil from it. War permeates his soul like dye takes to cloth, stains him crimson and charred and hollow.

It slips into his dreams until he can hardly bear it, images of black flags and corpses and scorched earth flitting behind his eyelids. It's worse seeing them mirrored in Isengrim's eyes. It pierces him sharp and jagged like the end of a broken bone, keens inside him silent and constant and echoes back from the cracks inside him.

He fights at Brenna, and he watches as the last of the stardust settles over the ashes of an empire. That still doesn't prepare him for the moment manacles are clasped over his wrists under the white banner of a peace talk.

 

{ & }

He heads to the nearby waterfall to wash away the dirt and gore of the battle. He's barely twenty paces from the cliffside when he notices someone already beat him to the spot. Geralt's breath catches a little when he recognizes Iorveth.

His body is lean, with the well-toned arms and wide shoulders of an archer. His hips are trim, legs long and powerful. The tattoo on his neck is part of a larger image, roses surrounded by vines that cover part of his chest and sneak down his left side. Unbound, his hair falls past his shoulders, the darkness of his empty eye socket a yawning shadow of midnight horrors.

He looks different, _other_. Old, wild, fey, dangerous. He tips his head back, lets the water run over his long hair, and the line of his profile is _magnificent_.

Somehow not even his scars can undo his beauty, and there are many of those. Geralt imagines mapping them with his hands, and his body's response is immediate and unexpected. It's been a while since he felt attraction towards a man, but there is no denying he's definitely interested _now_.

"If you keep your jaw hanging, you'll catch flies," Iorveth remarks dryly, amusement thick in his tone. "There's room enough for two, you know."

"Need someone to scrub your back?" Geralt crosses his arms, but there is a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. He knows an invitation when he hears one.

"I wasn't aware witchers offered such services," Iorveth arches an eyebrow at him, the smug bastard. But his heartbeat is picking up, Geralt can hear it, and that is satisfaction enough. For now.

"If the recompense is adequate."

Iorveth's lips curl into a wry smile. "I'm sure I can think of something."

 

{ & }

The world shrinks to the damp, rat-infested darkness of their cells, the stench of old death and fresh blood. The sound of screams and cries and mad laughter and broken whimpers that burrows deep into his skull. Shades of men and women he knows, haggard and hopeless and bruised.

The first time they come for him he spits in their faces and they beat him until the world goes dark and still. When he comes to, Cadmael is sitting next to him, pressing a tepid rag against his swollen face. His friend's bright smile is fractured, his eyes haunted.

One by one the guards take them away and return them marked, disfigured, desecrated. They want to know everything, paths, hideouts, resources, agents, signals. But what they want most is to find the man himself, extinguish the legend, the symbol, the beating heart of their rebellion in rivers of his own blood.

They want Isengrim Faoiltiarna.

"He escaped," the elves pass on the words in whisper, a gentle blow of air fanning the last dying spark of Iorveth's defiance, and he wraps himself around the warmth of this raw spite to keep himself from drowning.

He could never beg for himself, but for the others he pleads and he screams his throat raw. He beats himself against his chains, against the unrelenting walls of their hatred and cruelty, against the cold injustice of a fate he cannot accept; and it is with Cadmael's mauled body in his arms that he cries, bitter tears of helplessness and shame.

The cracks inside him are wide and raw and black. They spread into his peripheral vision and swallow it up until it feels like it's all that is left of him, held together by a red cobweb of blame and madness and despair.

 

{ & }

Iorveth kisses like he talks, biting and provoking and passionate. He has a firm grip on the back of Geralt's neck and angles his head for better access, to lick into his mouth and suck on his tongue. Cants his hips against him, bold and unashamed, and it rips a low, savage sound from Geralt's throat.

His body is no inviting curves and smooth skin, but hard angles and scar tissue. A terrible maelstrom twisting beneath Geralt's hands, seeking an outlet, and Geralt cannot seem to get enough of touching him. His fingers trace the marks, the star-shaped scar of an arrow on Iorveth's left shoulder, the kiss of a blade across his ribs. The whiplashes on his back, the pattern of a branding iron on his arm.

It's when Geralt raises his hand to the scarred side of his face that Iorveth flinches back. His good eye narrows venomously, and his lips part in a sneer both feral and vulnerable. "Don't bother, witcher."

Deliberate, Geralt runs his thumb along the scar, and the brittle tension wound tight in Iorveth's body bleeds out in a shuddering exhale. Then the heat is back in his eye, and he closes his hand around the both of them, stroking with quick, precise movements.

Geralt sinks his teeth into that smooth neck and Iorveth trembles, biting back a moan. They are not even finished yet, and Geralt already thinks about having him again, against the rock face and in the shallow water, kissing along all those scars he's been touching, and perhaps sucking him off just to see if he can still take another man's cock like he used to. He wants it all, wants to tear down all of Iorveth's walls until he is so far gone he cannot remember his own name.

 

{ & }

When the last body is thrown into the chasm, Iorveth tears himself free from the grip of his stunned guards and _jumps_. The bodies of the slaughtered break his fall. They provide cover against the archers. No one is reckless enough to leap after him. By the time they get ropes and lower men into the ravine, he has the headstart he needs to reach the forest. The woodland is his ally, where night falls quickly and the prey might outrun the hunters.

He flees until his legs give out. His missing eye is killing him. His lungs burn. From the pain in his side, he suspects a number of fractured ribs. He dislocated a shoulder in the fall and a lucky arrow nicked his left thigh. His hands are still bound, his body nothing but a mess of wounds and bruises, but he is free, and they are never taking him alive again.

That night there is rain, covering his tracks and drenching him to the bone. He doesn't dare sleep. He eats whatever he finds, a handful of berries, a couple of raw eggs. His face is nothing but agony. His chest hurts and he develops a barking cough. Soon enough, he is running a fever. He grits his teeth and pushes on.

He loses track of the days after that. He has no idea where he is or where he is headed. His vision swims. He shivers uncontrollably. Sometimes he slips, and it is getting harder and harder to get up after a fall, to remember why he should. He hears things in the night, voices, wolves, battles, Francesca's laugh. He is losing focus, barely aware of his own body, and entirely unaware of the moment he finally hits the ground.

 

{ & }

The roads to Loc Muinne are strewn with rebels, bandits, monsters. Sometimes, it's hard to tell them apart. Traveling with Iorveth is like a double-edged blade - his face is known to all, but he leads surely on paths only known to the Scoia'tael.

"You fought well at Vergen," Iorveth says, and Geralt studies him silently from across the campfire. Sparks fly as a log falls apart.

"So did you. Never thought I'd see the day."

"We have allied with Nilfgaard before. No one found that strange." Iorveth shrugs. "Now you, on the other hand…"

"So witchers don't have a place in the free Pontar Valley?"

"As you keep reminding us." He has a point. Even Geralt has to concede as much. But nothing is ever that simple. He knows where his heart lies, but a witcher's loyalty must be to the Path, for when it comes to men there are many sides and many causes, and each has its monsters.

Iorveth should know that better than anyone.

"I thought you hated all dh'oine."

"There is only one thing more terrible, more vicious than hatred. Do you know what it is?"

Geralt nods. "Love."

"Yes," Iorveth says, simple and defeated, but when he chuckles, it's shot with a grim taste of fatality. "There's no gentle good night at the end of this road, but I still wouldn't have it any other way. If the elves are to end like this, then I will go down kicking and screaming to protest that injustice with my last breath."

Geralt stares into the fire some more, twirls a twig between his fingers as his mind catches on the memories of a burned out eye, of scars beneath his palms, of a burning arrow set loose into the distance, it's path straight and destination certain.

 

{ & }

It takes almost three weeks until his fever breaks. The days are a blur, of voices, blue sky, a horse, firelight. Slowly, he becomes aware that he is lying on a travois, surrounded by elves. They are a mix of different commandos, stragglers of Brenna.

It takes him weeks to leave his sickbed, weak, shaky, all skin and bones. It takes months to learn how to shoot a bow with only one eye, how to wield his swords with any sort of confidence.

As time passes, tents spring up around their hideout, until they completely fill the small clearing and spill over into the shade of the forest. The spreading news of his escape brings them together, they come to see it with their own eyes, to offer him their weapons and their lives.

They have no one else left.

Secretly, Iorveth sends out men to all corners of the north. He listens with a hundred ears for a whisper of a name. He hopes against all hope. He touches the scar on his face and steals secret moments of grief when no one can see.

But the Iron Wolf is gone, his tracks cold and dead just like the bodies in the Ravine.

Hatred courses through him with every heartbeat like a sickness. Human villages burned to the ground, inhabitants slaughtered to the last babe mark his passing. He would have them feel his pain. He would have them scream for mercy like he once did, and show them none like he was shown none.

His legend spreads on the black wings of the destruction he leaves behind, and every day more elves flock to his bloodsoaked banner.

The Northern Realms wanted to behead the elven commandos in one clean sweep.

What they have created is the Woodland Fox.

 

{ Epilogue }

Sitting at the table that used to serve the war council during the siege is a somewhat strange experience. Barely any of the company remains, some absences more glaring than others. Once they are finished planning the hunt for the chelonodrake, they toast to success and one by one take their leave.

Geralt catches up to Maevarienn in the hallway. Many memories linger there, but they are merely a distraction, unimportant right now. Still, it's almost like he can hear a distinct voice echo back from the stone, deep, arrogant and bitter.

"What is it, witcher?"

"Your unit, where are they?"

"Iorveth received word. He's gone south," Maevarienn says, a subtle glint in his eyes. Geralt ignores it, just as he ignores how much more specific the answer was than the question.

"Must've been important if he left Vergen at this time."

"It was." Maevarienn regards him steadily, and Geralt knows better than to press.

 

{ & }

The distance between them is but a few steps, but it seems at once infinitesimal and unbridgeable. Iorveth is acutely aware of how much he's changed since they last saw each other. It seems unfair that the man before him is every inch as he remembers him.

"I wasn't sure you would come," the other says, and hearing his voice is like a blade through the heart. Iorveth's jaw goes tense with the sudden bottomless ache of it.

"I wasn't either," he admits dryly, and his voice is hoarse like he's sick.

"Yet here you are." There is something there, a quiet contemplation that sets Iorveth's teeth on edge. But then those full lips spread into a smile, wolfish and silent and all sharp white teeth, and it travels down his spine hot and cold like a threat and a promise.

 

**Author's Note:**

> After reading The Witcher: Matters of Conscience comic it struck me as peculiar that Iorveth left the town he was so intent on protecting. I wondered what, or indeed, who would be important enough for that. This is my official headcanon and you'll pry Isengrim/Iorveth from my cold dead hands. Comments and kudos are love.
> 
> I'm on [Tumblr](http://imaginativecrime.tumblr.com/) and you are welcome to drop by.


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